5 Reasons Why You Should Take That Professional Risk

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If you want something you’ve never had, you have to do something you’ve never done. And for a lot of people, that means taking a risk, career-wise. Yet far too often, people resist taking action because they’re scared.

Fear is a powerful yet insidious emotion. And during a global pandemic, its effects are magnified. It often masquerades as a cloak of protection, keeping us from doing things that may harm us. But sometimes, the real damage comes from the inaction that fear enables, especially regarding your career.

Fear is a liar, chipping away at our confidence, making us believe that we’re better off not trying new things or taking action. So we avoid those things that make us uncomfortable, but there is no growth in the status quo. Sooner or later, that caution and those fears that prevent you from getting hurt stagnate you, wreaking havoc on your progress.

To get what you want, you need to move past your fear. Here are five reasons why you should take that professional risk:

1. It’ll help you smash your limiting beliefs

Horrific nightmares of self-doubt plaque nearly everyone at some point, especially when we genuinely care about the outcome. We stress about doing those things that we place high importance on and value, such as a promotion, winning a new client, or starting our own business. So much so that we might never even attempt them because we mistakenly believe limiting beliefs like “I’ll make a fool of myself” or “I could never be successful.”

But taking action is the antidote to that. Once you take that professional risk toward what you want, you’ll begin to banish those limiting beliefs because you’ll see that they were unfounded. So often, what we’ve imagined in our heads is far worse than any real-life outcome. According to Brené Brown, you can choose courage or comfort, but you can’t have both at the same time; take the risk.

2. It’ll open you up to new people, opportunities, and possibilities

A whole new world opens up to you when you put yourself out there. Taking a risk means change, which sometimes gets a bad rap because it’s often viewed as a disruptor. When one thing changes, others usually follow suit. But if you flip that around, you’ll see that change is the antithesis to the status quo. Change shakes things up and breathes new life into old methods and routines. New people cross our paths, and with them, new opportunities. We’re forced to get out of ruts we may not know we’ve been in, to view things differently with a fresh perspective. It’s about envisioning what’s possible, not just what is.

3. You’ll gain valuable experience

Challenging yourself to leave your comfort zone helps you stretch your wings and gain new skills, experience, and confidence. That might look like mustering up your courage to strike out on your own, volunteering to lead an educational webinar, or offering to put together (or deliver) that new business pitch for your boss.

Still unsure about taking a chance? Ask yourself if what you’re doing today is getting you closer to where you want to be tomorrow. As hockey great Wayne Gretzky said, “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” Even if you fall short of what you set out to do, you’ll still be rich with the experience you gained along the way.

4. You’ll regret it if you don’t

In his book,?The Power of Regret:?How Looking Backward Moves Us Forward ,?Dan Pink ?shared that among the 16,000 responses to his World Regret Survey, a common thread was that people regretted not being daring enough in their careers, whether that was staying in a lackluster job rather than starting a business or playing it safe professionally. Pink calls these “boldness regrets,” the times we decide not to take a chance because the change we’re contemplating seems too big, disruptive, challenging, or hard. But “eventually the choice distresses us with a counterfactual in which we were more daring and, consequently, more fulfilled,” Pink said.

5. Action begets more action

When you decide to make the leap, you’re taking the first step toward growth. And the funny thing about action is that it begets more action. Once you start, you build momentum and are more inclined to keep it going. Action is empowering and contagious; inaction breeds stagnation.

If you’re still on the fence about whether or not to take that professional risk, heed the words of Zig Ziglar: “There are three Cs in life: choice, chance, change. You must make a choice to take a chance, or your life will never change.”

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